In Vietnam, South Still South Despite Changes In Direction

HO CHI MINH CITY, VIETNAM — At 6 o`clock every night the orchestra at Maxim`s restaurant on General Uprising Street cranks up and lets fly with a rousing rendition of ``Lady of Spain.``

Behind the two violinists, the organ player, the drummer, the clarinetist, the piano player, two guitarists and the lady cellist, a slide projector erupts and sprays fuzzy images of Leningrad, Leipzig and Hanoi across a yellowing movie screen.

Waiters in white jackets scurry from table to table in the packed two-story nightclub carrying trays of food and bottles of Dalat whiskey, Saigon beer and Van Hung cognac.

There is some mild excitement amid the polyphony of the leaderless orchestra and the clatter of forks and knives when a stunning woman dressed in a traditional Vietnamese ao dai enters the restaurant.

The woman is Mong Tuyen, Vietnam`s No. 1 actress, who won the Vietnamese equivalent of an Oscar this year for her portrayal of a combat nurse engaged in the valiant struggle of communist revolutionaries to defeat the American imperialists.

Like all the ``right`` people in what passes for Saigon society these days, Mong Tuyen has come to Maxim`s to mingle--or do what passes for mingling, since the government has clamped down on what it considers decadent American rock music and disco dancing.

Nevertheless, an evening at Maxim`s is Saigon`s equivalent to a night in Chicago`s most popular singles bar, its swankest restaurant and its best disco.

It is also one of the few, albeit barely transparent, windows to Saigon`s once raucous past. At the height of the war, Maxim`s was the place to go if you wanted to see some of South Vietnam`s best entertainers. Today, it is the only place.

But like everybody in Saigon these days, Maxim`s is making the best of what one waiter confided are some the grimmest times in the city`s history.

``The trouble with these Hanoi Communists is that they don`t know how to enjoy themselves, how to have fun,`` said one waiter, nodding at a group of sullen Vietnamese sitting at a table with a knot of equally sullen Russians.

Confronted with criticism like that, North Vietnamese who have been sent to Saigon to administer the once-wicked city snap back angrily.

``Look, we didn`t fight against the Japanese, the French and the Americans for 40 years so we could have fun,`` said a Vietnamese Foreign Ministry official.

``Then what`s the use in fighting?`` asked a British journalist. The official shook his head: ``I`m afraid the gulf between your world and mine is just too great for any meaningful communication,`` he said.

The same might be said for the chasm that still persists 10 years after the defeat of the American-supported government of South Vietnam by the North and nine years after the two Vietnams were declared one.

Contrary to all the plans concocted by the most grimly determined men in Hanoi, South Vietnam remains South Vietnam and the North remains the North.

Yes, southerners concede, there have been countless programs, crackdowns and harangues, but as one shopkeeper said recently, ``They will never turn Saigon into Ho Chi Minh City.``

When pressed on that score, officials from Hanoi admit that ``we have not been as successful as we would like to have been in Saigon--the people have been corrupted for too long by just too much American imperialism.``

For that reason, Hanoi has shifted much of its efforts into South Vietnam`s countryside, where farms have been collectivized and where the American presence was usually confined to combat.

The new regime also has concentrated on those South Vietnamese least resistent to its policies--the children.

All over Saigon, children wearing white shirts and the red bandannas of the Communist Young Pioneers can be seen carrying their red-bound books of Marxist-Leninist dogma. Others appear constantly in choirs on state-run television, singing revolutionary songs and reciting poetry about Uncle Ho Chi Minh, the man credited with leading Vietnam out of the wilderness of colonialism.

But more ominous, according to Saigonese who dare talk to foreigners without special permission (a crime in Saigon these days), is the way the children are being manipulated and used by the state.

``Please, I can`t talk to you here,`` said a 35-year-old engraver, nodding at his 10-year-old son and 12-year-old daughter. The man wanted to discuss the details involved in emigrating to America.

``My children are good children, but they have been taught to spy on us and report transgressions each week,`` he said. ``If they don`t have some report each week, their teacher gives them a bad time.``

The engraver was not exaggerating. A few years ago the state-run television station in Saigon broadcast a two-hour drama about a young girl who informed on her parents when she discovered them hiding a few ounces of gold in the floorboards of their house.